15 March 2007

Stop, Hey, What's that sound?

Very grumpy today, grumpier than usual in fact. Was woken up at 5 am by a building being lowered into place outside our bedroom window. You know in those first few moments of wakefulness when you aren't sure if you are actually awake or still asleep? Well, the sight of a building floating past your 3rd floor window doesn't really help you come to a conclusion one way or the other. My normal reaction to being woken up is to turn on my side and try and get back to sleep, but as the things that normally wake me up are people using the space under our bedroom window as a late night saloon and occasional pissoire I thought the situation unusual enough to merit further investigation. So I got up and went downstairs.

The whole laneway was blocked by a giant flatbed truck, and a massive crane from which was suspended a giant 20'x 10' section of cabin. This was being lowered into the car park of a neighboring office to join a similar sized section to form a new building. Luckily in addition to the crew working on the crane there was a supervising person from the company receiving the new building, and by supervising I mean sitting in his office reading a newspaper. After attracting his attention we had a pleasant conversation where I outlined my consternation at being awoken by the aforementioned floating building, and frustration at the timing of this event. He explained that his company didn't want to block traffic by doing this later in the day, but I didn't accept this, and countered with the suggestion that the laneway is a one-way back street with almost no traffic beyond the occasional pedestrian on their way to a makeshift late night saloon or pissoire. It was at this stage that he probably regretted volunteering for supervision duty, and was planning sweet revenge on his colleague that said all he would have to do is sit in his office and read the paper. He explained that 'someone' in his office had dropped a leaflet into all the houses on the street, and gestured towards the end of the laneway. I replied that that sounded like a good idea, however 'someone' forgot to deliver any leaflets to the apartments directly opposite his office, where the morning's events were actually going to take place.

"Oh," he replied, "that might have been a better idea".

There followed an uncomfortable moment of silence when we both realized neither one of us actually had an exit strategy for the conversation, and so with a poorly improvised "well, let us know in advance next time" from me, and a quiet "I'll get the Director to send round an apology note tomorrow " from him, we parted ways.

2 Comments:

Nice. It's one of the things I am ever grateful for having left the city. No more car alarms, sirens, and buildings being moved (in my case they tried to move my own building by using power drills outside).

I agree - when living in tha'city our house was on a major junction which was on the main 'stagger home' route from the 'strip. Drunk people seem to like pressing the pedestrian crossing buttons even when there are no cars. very safety concious of them. until they cross before the man goes green and goes BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEPPPP. you get the idea. you'd think they'd switch the sound off at night.

now all i have to contend with is false dawn birdies and gosh darn if they aren't just to cute to get angry with (onyl because my cat's too fat to actually catch them)